Full
Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! For
Militant Workers Action to Stop ICE
Raids and Deportations! Democrats
and Republicans, Enemies of Immigrants
–Forge a
Revolutionary Workers Party!Last year’s
immigrant-bashing bill, H.R. 4437 died in
Congress. But now its key components are back,
in immigration “reform” proposals by Republican
president George Bush and the Democratic Party
majority in Congress. Meanwhile, the Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cops of the
Homeland Security Department have unleashed
nationwide raids. On this May Day 2007, we call
on the workers movement to come out in defense
of immigrants, not just in words, but in
militant labor action. Today, union bureaucrats
and liberal Democrats will make pro-immigrant
noises from the platforms, but their vague calls
for “legalization” won’t obtain legal rights and
union conditions for more than 13 million
undocumented workers. They say “stop the raids
and deportations.” But how? The only way to stop
the wave of anti-immigrant repression is to
mobilize labor’s power against the ICE Gestapo.
Labor must demand full citizenship rights for
all immigrants, documented or undocumented .
When the migra tries to stage its raids in a
union town like New York, thousands of workers
should pour into the streets to block the
immigrant catchers. ¡La lucha obrera no tiene
fronteras – Workers’ struggle has no
borders! For
Militant
Workers Action to Stop ICE Raids and
Deportations!(1 May 2007)

Oakland Dock
Workers Honor Picket, Shut Down War Cargo
ShipperFor Workers Strikes Against
the War!On
May 19 in Oakland, California dock workers of
the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) Local 10 refused to cross picket lines
outside a notorious war cargo shipping firm,
Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), leaving
three ships idle for consecutive shifts. The
picket was called by the Port Action Committee,
an antiwar coalition including the Oakland
Education Association, which declared it was
holding an official union picket. The dock
workers’ action shows the depth of anger against
the war in the U.S. working class and the real
possibility of labor action against the war.
Since before the war began, the Internationalist
Group has uniquely called for workers strikes
against the war and for transportation unions to
“hot cargo” (refuse to handle) war cargo. A host
of opportunist socialist groups dismissed this
call as “pie in the sky.” Yet
here were West Coast union dock workers
respecting antiwar picket lines and shutting
down war shippers. This can be an important
first step toward the mobilization of workers
power to shut down the war machine, but that
requires a sharp struggle against the bourgeois
politics of the antiwar groups and union
officialdom. Longshore
Workers
Honor Picket Line, Shut Down War Cargo Shipper
in Oakland(20 May 2007)

After the
Presidential Elections, A Reactionary
Offensive Against Youth and WorkersFrance
Turns Hard to the RightTo Defeat
Sarkozy, End Class-Collaborationist
AlliancesOut
of the most appalling presidential campaign that
France has known in a long time, the candidate
emerged victorious who most embodied chauvinist
electioneering and the employers’ determination
to put an end to the threadbare union gains
still remaining after almost a quarter century
of dismantling the “welfare state.” Nicolas
Sarkozy has been installed in the Elysée
(France’s presidential palace) in order to
proclaim the death of the “French model.” This
policy represents a consensus among the French
bourgeoisie, and the “socialist” Royal was in
fact the candidate of a bourgeois coalition,
backed by small capitalist parties. As always,
this popular front of class collaboration had
the purpose of chaining the working people to a
sector of the bourgeoisie. “Sarko” vs.
“Sego” was a contest between two competitors
running on the same basic program, and a
majority of the voters preferred the original to
the copy. If the presidential campaign
demonstrated the bankruptcy of the
“social-liberal” parliamentary left, it also
laid bare the dead-end of a “far left” sunk in
popular-frontism.The lesson of the recent
presidential elections and of social struggles
over the last decade is the urgent and necessary
regrouping of orthodox Marxists in an
authentically Trotskyist party. France
Turns
Hard to the Right(24 May 2007)

Protest
Against
“Minuteman”
Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes at NYUUpwards of a hundred
demonstrators converged on New York University’s
Kimmel Center April 9 to protest the appearance
of Chris Simcox, co-founder of the fascistic
vigilante group, “Minuteman Project.” The racist
Simcox was hosted by the College Republicans in
a phony “debate” on immigration. The
Internationalist Group and CUNY Internationalist
Clubs helped publicize the protest and mobilized
a contingent of students and workers. Our
speaker emphasized that the Minutemen are part
of the attack on immigrants that has brought
large-scale raids by the ICE immigration cops
all around the country. The war on immigrants is
the “home front” of the
imperialist war on Iraq. It is necessary to
mobilize the power of the working class to
defeat these attacks, which are coming from the
very top, from both the Republicans and the
Democrats. Protest
Against
“Minuteman” Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes at NYU(10 April
2007)

Defeat U.S.
Imperialism in the Near East, and "At Home"!
War on Iraq, Immigrants Under AttackThere has been a
dramatic intensification of repression recently
against immigrants in the United States.
Immigrant workers have been picked up by the
hundreds in a series of raids by the Immigration
Control and Enforcement (ICE) police. The fact
that the raids by the ICE Gestapo have taken
place with barely a peep of protest from the
unions and the “antiwar” movement is
outrageous. The immigrant workers are being
targeted as part of a drive by the U.S.
government to regiment the population for war.
The next time there is a raid in a union
stronghold like New York, workers should
massively pour into the streets to block this
atrocity. It is necessary to bring out the ranks
of labor in struggle to defeat the imperialist
war abroad and the bosses’ war on immigrants,
racial minorities and working people “at home.”War
on
Iraq, Immigrants Under Attack(17 March 2007)

Mobilize Workers’
Power to Free Mumia!Hundreds
March
for Mumia Abu-Jamal Outside Court Hearing in
PhiladelphiaRuling shows: No
Justice for the Oppressed in the Capitalist
CourtsAbolish the Racist
Death Penalty!Over 500 people
turned out to demonstrate on behalf of Mumia
Abu-Jamal outside the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of
Appeals in Philadelphia on May 17 [2007]. In the
packed courtroom another 200 heard the
prosecution demand that the death sentence
against Jamal be reinstated while defense lawyer
Robert Bryan asked for a new trial. While some had
illusions that a new trial could be fair, many
protestered declared that the entire “justice”
system was racist to the core. Outside, a spokesman
for the Internationalist Group addressed the
crowd, saying: “Mumia’s case today
illustrates the way in which black people are
kept down, particularly in the northern ghettos,
in the wake of the civil rights laws, which
supposedly outlawed legal discrimination, but
did nothing for blacks in the north.... A lot of times you hear
people say they are “talking truth to power.”
There is no point in talking truth to power. The
judges in that court over there don’t need us to
tell them the truth. They are meting out class
justice, capitalist class justice. We need to
talk power to power, the power of the working
class, which makes this society run, and can
also bring it to a halt. We need to mobilize
that power to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Hundreds
March for Mumia Abu-Jamal Outside Court
Hearing in Philadelphia(21 May 2007)

A Quarter Century on Death Row –
No Justice in the Capitalist CourtsIt
Will Take Workers’ Power to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!Abolish the
Racist Death Penalty!Twenty-five
years
ago last December in the city of Philadelphia,
Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot, arrested and beaten
to within an inch of his life while in police
custody. For a quarter century, the former
Black Panther and renowned radical journalist
has been kept in isolation on Pennsylvania’s
death row. The ruling class is determined to
silence this innocent man who has powerfully
exposed their crimes and championed their
victims, for which he became known as the
“voice of the voiceless.”
Mumia’s life is in danger. With defense and
prosecution appeals before a federal circuit
court panel, the death sentence (overturned in
2001) could be restored at any time.
Democratic governor Ed Rendell, who was
Philadelphia district attorney at the time of
Jamal’s arrest and engineered the 1981
frame-up trial, has pledged to sign a third
death warrant. Oral arguments have been
scheduled for May 17. The Internationalist
Group urgently calls to rekindle mass protests
and particularly to bring out the power of the
working class to abolish the racist death
penalty and win freedom now for Mumia!It
Will
Take Workers’ Power to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!(17 March
2007)

More Danish
Blowback:Police-State
Attack
on Squatters in CopenhagenOn
March 1, a police “anti-terror” squad in
the Danish capital of Copenhagen landed
by helicopter on the roof of the “Ungdomshuset”
(Youth House) which has been occupied by
squatters for almost a quarter of a century. The
storming of the youth house provoked six days of
street-fighting. In all, nearly 700 persons were
arrested. The police round-up was the largest in
Danish history since the German occupation in
World War II. Danish pseudo-socialists criticize
the anarchist-autonomist youth for “violence”
while calling on them to beg for crumbs from the
Social Democrats who are co-responsible for the
capitalist state violence. The junior league
imperialists of the Danish bourgeoisie yearn to
police København like they police Kabul and
Kosovo on behalf of NATO. To go up against and
defeat the class violence of these helpmates of
U.S. imperialism, who acted as deputy sheriffs
to the world gendarmes laying waste to Iraq,
requires a superior power: that of the working
class. And that requires revolutionary
leadership. Police-State
Attack
on Squatters in Copenhagen(27 March 2007)

An Injury to One Is An Injury to
All!Mobilize
NYC
Labor to Defend Brooklyn Immigrant Workers!In New York City, workers
at several food distribution companies in the
Bushwick area of Brooklyn and nearby Ridgewood,
Queens have undertaken a struggle to unionize
their plants. The struggle is being led by the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a labor
union which seeks to revive the traditions of
the anarcho-syndicalist “Wobblies.” In the space
of two months, more than 20 immigrant workers
have been fired by these companies, who threaten
to call in the immigration cops. These are small
companies, located in an isolated warehouse
district deep in the industrial backwaters of
Brooklyn and Queens. To win requires bringing
the power of New York’s organized workers
movement to bear. And that means building
class-struggle oppositions against the bourgeois
labor fakers who shackle the unions to the
capitalist Democratic Party. Marches in
solidarity with the immigrant workers were held
on January 15 and February 19. The
Internationalist Group calls on all of NYC labor
to take up the fight of the embattled immigrant
workers. Mobilize
NYC
Labor to Defend Brooklyn Immigrant Workers!(18 February
2007)

Outrage! Teenager Prosecuted
for “Procuring a Miscarriage”Defend Amber
Abreu – Drop All the Charges!State Wants to Charge Her with Murder
for Attempted AbortionLast
month,
Amber Abreu went to the hospital in Lawrence,
Massachusetts after trying to terminate a
pregnancy by taking a drug, misoprostol, that is
a key component of the abortion pill RU-486. Now
the state has charged her, using an archaic law
dating back to the 1840s, with “procuring a
miscarriage.” Amber, a recent immigrant from the
Dominican Republic, faces seven years in jail on
this outrageous charge. But the state wants to
go even further and charge her with homicide,
for which she could face a sentence of life
behind bars. The whole prosecution is an obscene
miscarriage of justice. But where is the
national outcry over the hideous persecution of
this 18-year-old immigrant who symbolizes the
plight of young women, often terribly alone, who
face desperate decisions that can ruin their
lives? The “mainstream” (bourgeois) feminists
haven’t exactly rushed to highlight her case.
They are following the example of Democrat
Hillary Clinton, who wants to find “common
ground” with anti-abortion forces. The
persecution of Amber Abreu underscores how the
oppression of women is deeply embedded in the
structure of capitalist society. Trotskyists
call for free abortion on demand, and for
women’s liberation through socialist
revolution. Defend
Amber
Abreu – Drop All the Charges!(22 February
2007)

For
Workers Strikes Against the War
Don't Beg Congress!

The popular front “peace
movement” held mass demonstratons January 27
to pressure the Democratic Party. “The
voters want peace. Tell the new Congress:
Act Now to End the War.”
End the war? How? They aren’t even calling
for immediate withdrawal. The
Democratic majorities in the Senate and
House of Representatives aren’t about to cut
off funds for the war that they have
supported from the outset. Voters last
November may have thought they were voting
for peace by electing Democrats, but what
they will get is more war. The Democratic
Party is now the main war party in the
United States as they maneuver for the 2008
presidential election. No
quantity of pacifist speeches will succeed
in pressuring the ruling class to get out of
the Near East. U.S. troops will stay in Iraq
until they are forced out. The
Internationalist Group calls to turn massive
working-class opposition to the war into
militant labor action: for workers strikes
against the war, for transport
workers to “hot cargo”
(refuse to handle) war materiel.Don't
Beg
Congress!(23 January 2007)

Against the Tortillazo,
Impose Workers Control!Mexico's
Tortilla Crisis, Product of Capitalism2007 began with a spectacular increase in
the price of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican
diet, as basic as bread in the United States.
President Felipe Calderón then announced a
“voluntary” price ceiling which was in fact a
40-percent price hike. The opposition led
by the PRD (Party of the Democratic
Revolution) of Andrés Manuel López Obrador
(AMLO) is calling for a trust fund to subsidize
tortillas, but only for the neediest. The
aim of the AMLO/PRD popular front is to keep
protests limited to the capitalist framework.
Yet the drastic price increases, which are
literally taking food off the tables of Mexican
poor and working people, are the product of the
capitalist market. To combat the tortillazo
(the tortilla attack), the
Grupo Internacionalista calls for worker-neighborhood
supply
committees with the power to shut down
businesses which do not respect the specified
price, as well as to seize stocks from hoarders;
for workers control over the whole chain of
production and workers inspection of the
accounting books of the agro-industrial giants.
In order to smash these monopolies and
expropriate them in the interests of the working
people, what’s required is a struggle for a
workers and peasants government. Mexico's
Tortilla
Crisis, Product of Capitalism(21 January 2007)